In the end, it was easy. Despite the breathless insistence of Wolf Blitzer and the television pundits that it was "too close to call", Mitt Romney never came near preventing the re-election of President Barack Obama.
Nate Silver predicted it. So, weirdly, did Bob Dylan. So in future, it seems, when you want to know who's going to win an American election, you should either ask a scientific statistician, or a wizened troubadour in a cowboy hat. Perhaps next time America votes, they should be … [Read more...]

So, Barack or Mitt? Today Americans vote in an election whose effects will be felt in almost every corner of the globe.
I'm not an American, and I don't have a vote, so I'm not going to say who I think should win between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. In a sense, as Stephen Fry said recently, it's none of my business. I know how offended I get when outsiders start telling me how we should run our country -- most recently when Mitt Romney said this summer that London wasn't properly prepared … [Read more...]

What the hell was that? There were times, watching the opening ceremony to the London Olympic Games, when it was hard to escape the impression that the whole thing had been sponsored by the manufacturers of LSD, or mescaline, or some other potent psychotropic. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to carp or denigrate. I loved it. But it was completely and utterly mad.
What must the rest of the world have thought, looking on? At times the whole thing seemed designed to confirm the long-held … [Read more...]